


In the Beginning

by Laylah



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between one world's end and another's beginning, the Word of God is spoken by another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Cadence

In the beginning

In the beginning was

In the beginning was the void, and the void was

No. That wasn't right.

In the beginning was the Word. Yes.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the Most High and the Word was the Most High, and the Word once spoken became a shape, became the shape that could move through the world of shells and speak His Will without all things shattering.

I am that I am.

Thou shalt have no other

Now darkness was upon the face of the deep and there was no Spirit moving over it. Here was no light but only shadow. Here was no motion but only shadow. Between the thought and the action falls

No. If there was darkness now it was only a held breath, a world waiting for a Word. The darkness would be divided from the light. The power of the Most High was ineffable, was unquestionable. All things happened as He willed, and not even the prince of chaos

There was a boy, a son of Adam. Son of Adam, heir of Cain. The marks he bore did not spare him, did not curse him alone. The name of chaos was written in his skin, and the damned flocked to him, seeking to challenge

It could not be. The Word would not permit it. The Word _had_ not permitted

Now there was the void, and the darkness.

In the ending was the Word, and the Word was without the Most High, without solace, without grace.

What moved then upon the face of the deep was not the Spirit, not salvation: but the darkness parted all the same, sundered by a Will that could brave Hell and challenge Heaven. That Will called the Word back to being, spoke the Word and gave it form.

"I am Metatron the Seraph," he said in answer to the summons. "I entrust my wrath to you." That was the function for which he had been made and now re-made.

The Demifiend, the Will of Chaos made flesh, reached up to touch the mark of the Most High emblazoned on the Metatron's brow. The curse written across his skin flared red, and the mark seared. "Come with me," he said. There was no substance within the Metatron's armor that could resist him; he had spoken the Word and it would obey his command.

Not since the first rebellion had such a legion assembled. The Demifiend commanded the loyalty of all the wicked powers by now, and even some who should have been pure: there was Gabriel, her sword laid down and her eyes soft even in the presence of the Harlot and the Beast. There was Raphael, bowing in respect when the Demifiend passed him. The Metatron cast down his eyes before he could see if even Michael would offer such obeisance.

"We're going to see Masakado," the Demifiend told his legion. "You three, follow me." The pull of his will against the empty joints of armor was like a tide, like an act of war, impossible and arrogant and true. He brought with him the Lord of the Flies, lurching hunched and ungainly on insect legs, and the cursed First Woman, the Serpent coiled over her shoulders and her swagger undaunted by her cloven hooves. Merely to keep such company was unclean. Fire should have cleansed them all. But the fire had never come at the Metatron's own call, only come through him as a torrent through an open dam, and the Most High stayed silent, gave no order to open the floodgates.

The gate to the Bandou Shrine shattered under their onslaught. The soldiers of the four Guardians had no chance against them, against the horrors Beelzebub could summon or the hungry strikes of Lilith and her bestial lover. The enemies of the Demifiend were his as well, by the Word that remade him, and the Metatron cast before him the light that did not heal but killed, the scouring light that was the angels' sword. There was no honor in their victory.

"You should rejoice," Lilith suggested. Her power was growing with use; it was plain enough to see. Her eyes sought his weakness, sought a chance for conquest. The pride that had made her rebel still drove her. Why would the Most High create them with such love for power, when humility would better--

"Angels don't do that," Beelzebub said. It should never have been a relief to have a thought interrupted by the buzzing of a demon's voice. "No souls of their own. No hate. No grief. No joy."

"Tragic," Lilith purred, reaching out with one claw, her eyes as wild and yellow as her desert's sands.

The Demifiend stepped in front of her then, and it was his hand that brushed the Metatron's armor plates, his fingertips that traced their joints and slipped into the spaces between. "There's no reason to rejoice yet," he said. His face was calm and beatific as a saint's, as certain in his righteousness as the Morningstar had ever been. "That'll come after we win."

His power would not permit silence. "My lord," the Metatron said, bowing his head in obedience to the Will.

The laughter of the Demifiend was soft as the fleece of the Lamb, terrible as the hymns of Beelzebub's flies. He slipped his fingers free of the Metatron's armor, but the touch lingered. "Come," he said. "The guardians dare to challenge me. Let's show them that they can't."

That he would prevail was never in question. The guardians of the directions conceded to him, one after the other, as he withstood their assaults undaunted and answered with all the power of Chaos. His servants struck and cast and summoned as he directed them, moving in a harmony that ill-suited the Reason they championed.

Then, as the last of the guardians drew breath to curse or defy them one last time, the Demifiend smiled. He motioned to the demons to step back, and power coursed raw through the Metatron's shell, filling him, overtaking him, the full measure of divine wrath: the Fire of Sinai, moving in him and through him and leaving nothing but ash in its wake.

The being who had been called a seraph, who had been the Word spoken by the Most High, the instrument of divine justice, crumpled to the temple floor like a puppet with cut strings. There was nothing of the holy left within him now; he had been turned to his purpose by the enemies of Heaven. He stared, and saw nothing; he knelt, and could not pray.

The Demifiend stood before him, hand extended, an offering. "Don't grieve," he said. Was that what this was? Was that possible now, at the end of all things? "It isn't like that," the Demifiend said. He waited, his Will tugging until the Metatron took his hand. "It's going to get better from here. You'll see. This is the beginning." 

 


End file.
